Crocodiles and other reptiles are also affected by the bushmeat crisis. Often captured and transported live, crocodiles can suffer a great deal before they are butchered.

copyright - RG Ruggiero

Humans share much of our DNA with great apes and monkeys like this black and white colobus. Bushmeat hunting exposes humans to diseases carried by non-human primates, and vice versa.

Commercial logging in Central and West Africa opens up roads and access to commercial hunters and can lead to wildlife populations’ decline.

(c.) D. Siddle

While most people are aware that elephants are poached for their ivory, many do not know that elephants are also a part of the bushmeat crisis. One elephant yields thousands of kilos of meat, which may be easier to sell in markets than elephant ivory.

Bryan Curran

Bushmeat training programs help build the capacity of wildlife and protected area managers dealing with the bushmeat crisis every day.

Bushmeat & Wildlife Trade

Asian Wildlife Trade

Bushmeat and Wildlife Trade

Bushmeat Crisis in Brief

BCTF has been gathering and synthesizing information on the bushmeat crisis since 1999. Articles produce for newsletters, journals and the web, plus project descriptions and important documents, are cataloged in the sections below. The first page,What is the Bushmeat Crisis?, summarizes the main points and provides some definitions.

Asian Wildlife Trade

Starting in late 2005, BCTF began a concerted effort to track information on Asian Wildlife Trade, with a focus on developing an information portal for projects and publications. For more information about this portal and another for Bushmeat information, visit our

Maps & Research
pages. See the pages below for more on the issues and solutions which characterize wildlife trade in Asia, and information about BCTF's efforts to expand our knowledge network beyond Africa.

From 1999 - 2009, the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force members and staff worked together to fulfill its mission of building a public, professional and government constituency aimed at identifying and supporting solutions that effectively respond to the bushmeat crisis in Africa and around the world. While the formal collaboration has ended, BCTF members and former staff continue to work in the field, on policy and with stakeholders around the world. The BCTF website continues to showcase the results of our decade of work and provides the Bushmeat IMAP's archive of bushmeat publications and projects.